I. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to communication systems and, in particular, to systems and methods for managing networks.
II. Background and Material Information
Because of the Internet's global reach, the Internet has become a universal communications medium for businesses. With distance-independent rates and flat fees, the cost of communicating over the Internet is drastically cheaper when compared to the cost of the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN). Indeed, businesses are rapidly deploying all of their communications to the Internet, including voice traffic, which has been the exclusive domain of the PSTN.
With the advent and ubiquity of the Internet, virtual private networks (VPN) have emerged as a way to build a private communication network over a shared public or private infrastructure, which serves as a base network. In essence, a VPN is a service a private network on a public network infrastructure, such as the Internet. A service is a function provided to users and/or processors of a network. A virtual private network is “virtual” because it is logically separated from other traffic on the Internet. It is also “private” since the information that is exchanged between users may be encrypted or encoded to provide privacy. VPNs provide secure private connections over the Internet by enabling authentication of users and locations, delivering secure and private “tunnels” between users or locations, and encrypting user communications. Some VPNs offer performance guarantees (e.g., packet loss, latency, availability), which are referred to as Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees (also known as Service Level Agreements (SLAs)).
To address the demand for VPN services, network manufacturers are rapidly building VPN capabilities into routers and other networking equipment. Indeed, VPNs are supported by a multi-vendor mix of switches, routers, and transport equipment, all of which include a wide variety of complex protocols and technologies. The diverse nature of the hardware and protocols makes integration and network management a true challenge. Moreover, without effective management tools, service providers offering VPN services have difficulty managing their VPNs to the degree necessary to guarantee quality of service (QoS) contracts with their customers. As such, there is a need to provide systems and methods for managing services, such as VPN services.